


all those who wander

by w_anderingheart



Category: EXO (Band), IU (Musician), K-pop
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_anderingheart/pseuds/w_anderingheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And yet, flowers are universally pretty. Even the dead ones--you look at them and know that they once had their beautiful days. In the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all those who wander

**Author's Note:**

> a very old wip that i actually resurrected. BAEKIU IS MY NEW CRACK  
> cross-posting. original post date: 25/7/15

Baekhyun is awake before the sun is, which is not uncommon nor unfamiliar, but today his phone is vibrating harshly against the pillow and he can feel the sensation rubbing up against his cheek. Across the screen is a single text message from his manager, with no words but an unopened link.

He clicks the article and sees a picture of himself, or what he assumes is himself because the headline has his name in it and claims he was caught holding hands with pop soloist IU at the Melon Awards Show last night. He squints at the screen. The brightness from the phone leaves a burning sting in his eyes. For a moment, he blinks away, and stares at Chanyeol’s sleeping figure on the other side of the dark room, the outline of his body rising and falling as he breathes.

Baekhyun looks back at the phone. It does look like they are holding hands, from that angle, in that lighting. Awards shows are the worst.

“We weren’t,” Baekhyun says when he dials his manager.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Then the line clicks and Baekhyun flops into his pillow, feeling numb.

He wakes again to an empty room and a chorus of voices through the walls. When he stumbles out of bed, he is the last one to join the members around the table. Chanyeol is seated in front of him, shoving rice into his mouth quietly. Junmyeon is leaning against the counter staring at his phone. Baekhyun makes the mistake of meeting his eyes.

“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, when Junmyeon won’t look away. Junmyeon blinks at him for a long second, and then nods, pocketing the phone.

“Something bad?” asks Sehun, nudging Baekhyun in the side lightly with his elbow.

Baekhyun smiles at him thinly as he places an egg over his rice. “Tiny scandal,” he says to him, pinching the air with his thumb and index finger to make his point. He wears his camera-smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“With a girl?”

“Yes, with a girl. Who else?”

Chanyeol spills his water across his plate. Baekhyun looks up at him.

“I read the article. It’s dumb.” That’s Jongdae. He makes an unimpressed face.

“You think everything is dumb.” Sehun pokes Jongdae with a chopstick. “You thought his scandal with Taeyeon-noona was fake until we caught them making out on the couch here.”

Jongdae fires back with his own snide remarks, until Junmyeon starts scolding them all to eat faster.

Baekhyun bites his egg, swallows it thickly, and tastes nothing.

 

-

 

IU’s real name is Lee Jieun. Baekhyun types her up into a search engine and scrolls through several pages of her biography. He knows  _of_  her, but doesn’t exactly know her.

She is younger than him by a year, but has at least four years head start in the music industry, not including her training time. Her music is all soft and sweet, like her face. Baekhyun doesn’t even  _remember_  sitting beside her at the Melon Awards.

He closes the internet browser on his phone afterwards, then deletes his search history.

The following week, things are much smoother. As Jongdae predicted, the article was, in fact, dumb and mostly everyone has let it go. At the MAMA Awards, Junmyeon is in a much better mood. The company is happy that the trouble blew over, and when the company is happy, Junmyeon is happy. Baekhyun also suspects Junmyeon thinks they’re going to win at least one of the big categories tonight.

EXO waits backstage for their performance. It’s chaotic and loud, but the kind that Baekhyun relishes and finds a certain peace in. He slumps against a wall, headset mic curled around his neck and breathes in the sweat and hairspray and studio lights.

He stares up at the ceiling, counts the motes of dust floating in the air.

“Are you Baekhyun?”

The voice is quiet. He barely hears it beneath the steady sound of his own heartbeat.

Lee Jieun is dressed in black lace, long-sleeved and modest with a hem that goes a little past her knees. At first, Baekhyun doesn’t recognize her because she isn’t smiling. In all her pictures on Naver, she is shining and grinning and waving. She doesn’t look like this in person.

“Excuse me?” he says, staring at her critically. She is small up close, shorter than him even in heels.

“The press wants to photograph us. Unless you’re not Baekhyun.” She speaks the way she sings—softly. Except it’s not sweet. Baekhyun is still staring, but she doesn’t curl in under his gaze. She matches it unblinkingly. Baekhyun looks away first.

“Well, I don’t care what the press want.”

She lifts a delicate eyebrow at him. Not in offense, he notes. Her expression confuses him. He can’t call her rude, but she has no gloss. No charm. Which is not the way the media talks about her. He had read somewhere her nickname was Nation’s Little Sister.

“You aren’t much,” she states, rather solemnly. “I wondered why EXO was so popular, but I guess it’s just the product as a whole.”

There is no malice in the way she says it, as if simply stating facts out of an encyclopedia. Something about that is even more off-putting. He frowns at her.

“I could say the same about you.”

Baekhyun feels an arm curl over his shoulders. Chanyeol has appeared at his side, tugs him close and then lets go, grinning his idol-grin.

“Hello, IU-ssi.” He bows at her. Baekhyun had forgotten to bow. Probably because she hadn’t done so first. “It’s nice to meet you.”

She dips her head, a miniscule movement. Her lips quirk. “Likewise.”

“I hope Baekhyun was being his usual, hospitable self. He’s actually in charge of charisma in our group.”

She regards Chanyeol blankly. “I never would have guessed.”

“Ah, well.” Chanyeol throws his head back in laughter. “I’m a fan of yours. I’ll be rooting for your win in the soloist category.”

“Thank you. I hope your performance goes… swimmingly.” She turns to leave then, abrupt and without a goodbye. Chanyeol folds his arms across his chest, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

They don’t speak for a moment. Baekhyun wonders what Chanyeol is thinking. Her voice is still ringing in his head—her strange, soft cadence that is neither rude nor kind. He is still trying to place it.

“She’s pretty. I like her,” Chanyeol offers. He gives Baekhyun a meaningful look.

Baekhyun exhales softly. “Chanyeol, come on. Don’t—“

“Attitude. I mean she’s got an attitude. Wasn’t expecting that.” Chanyeol runs one of his long fingers across his chin. He is staring at Baekhyun with that look that leaves a hollow ache in Baekhyun’s stomach. It’s like when Taeyeon started flirting with Baekhyun for the first time and Baekhyun was so surprised, he didn’t know what to do and Chanyeol stared at him then told him it was a good idea to just go for it.

“I think you should keep her,” Chanyeol says, and he turns on his heel to join the other members.

When EXO is called for standby, Baekhyun sees Jieun reclining lazily in a chair, scrolling through her phone with one hand, as she rests her cheek onto the other.

EXO files onto the stage. Jieun never goes back into the venue to watch the performance. In the middle of ‘Growl’, her reclining figure and soft voice and stagnant expression flashes through Baekhyun’s mind and he finally places it—neither rude nor kind, but jaded.

 

-

 

It takes three people before he gets her number. He saves her simply under  _Jieun_  and then stares at it for a while. Calling would be strange, but the fact that he even has her contact is strange enough. He settles for a text message, saying who he is and if she is not too busy to meet.

The reply comes less than twenty minutes later.  _Where?_  is all it says, but it is not a refusal, and Baekhyun is surprised. He sends her the address of the café and dessert shop near his dorm.

He arrives first, shortly before nine in the evening. He had showered all the hairspray and makeup off of him before stepping out and it had helped him walk the whole ten minutes without so much as a second glance. He orders himself a milkshake and deliberates getting one for her. Taeyeon would never eat anything with too much cream, when they were still together.

But today, Baekhyun orders a second one anyways. When Jieun walks in, she sits down across from him, sliding into the booth seat wordlessly. She sips the milkshake without hesitation, wrinkles her nose for a second, then sips it some more.

She is dressed in denim and worn-in sneakers. Her hair, long and black, spills around her shoulders and the open collar of her white blouse. Baekhyun can’t stop staring at her. She is makeup-less, like him, and somehow, it makes her pale skin look even paler. She drinks half her milkshake in total peace.

The silence is long and awkward, though Baekhyun suspects that it is a one-sided sentiment. Jieun looks perfectly comfortable, as if he isn’t even there and she is simply enjoying a night out by herself.

The bell above the shop door tinkles behind him. Jieun looks up for the first time since she sat down. She licks some cream off her pink lips.

“You come here often?” she asks, swirling her straw around the tall glass.

“I—yes. I do.” Baekhyun’s eyebrows furrow.

“I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but this milkshake is decent.” Her tone is rather disinterested, and Baekhyun scoffs lightly.

“So we’re talking now?” he says.

“Oh, we don’t have to if you don’t want to. You’re calling the shots, after all.” She throws some of her long hair over her shoulder, unsmiling. “I’m just along for the ride.”

There is a worrying amount of giggles coming from the tables behind them, but he doesn’t want to turn around. “Excuse me?”

“You wouldn’t track down my number and ask to meet up in plain sight if you didn’t want to revive that stupid scandal,” Jieun answers calmly.

Baekhyun looks at her with wide eyes. He doesn’t know what to say. That was the idea in his head, but to put it into words is disarming. Jieun doesn’t seem ruffled by it at all.

“You have some fans sitting over there and they’re taking pictures of us. You want us to look at least half amiable, yes?” She sips her milkshake. “Stop glaring at me like you want to murder me, then. Unless that’s the sort of scandal you want to make up this time. In which case, I’m all for that too.”

The flat quality to her tone, which Baekhyun had immediately disliked at first, is something he is quickly becoming used to. Baekhyun has met blunt people before, but Jieun is something beyond blunt. There is no filter to anything she says.

“Why did you agree to meet if you knew all this?” Baekhyun counters. A normal person would flee at the first sign of being used, but Jieun is staring at him through her long eyelashes and smiles a real, full smile as if Baekhyun has offered her a challenge and he is nothing to her but someone caught in the crossfire.

Her smile, now that he sees it in person, is truly attractive. But it’s not her camera-ready smile. This one lacks humour and warmth. It leaves a haunting lingering at the back of his neck.

“Celebrity life is so dull, don’t you find?” she says, in her quiet, quiet voice. Baekhyun stares at her lips as they move. “I’ll take my fun where I can get it.”

They leave together. Baekhyun pays the whole bill and Jieun makes no protest. As the waitress stands by their table with the credit card machine, Jieun’s face is angelic. Baekhyun stares, transfixed. The waitress watches her too, with a blush on her cheeks and Jieun signs a napkin for her excitedly when the girl asks.

Then the waitress leaves and Baekhyun has never fully understood the idea of wearing a mask until that very moment. Jieun’s expressions shift on and off like a light switch, without any in-between.

Out on the street, it is fully dark now. Baekhyun glances up at the flickering street lamp above them, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“I’ll… walk you home?” he says to her uncertainly. It feels awkward, but a part of him knows she is going to refuse anyways.

“I live nearby,” she replies and walks off with nothing more.

Baekhyun watches her retreating figure for a whole two blocks until she turns at the corner of the street, and he wonders if this is what happens to everyone under a spotlight—if they all burn up under its heat once they’re in it too long.

 

-

 

Later, after he circles the same street twice and cuts through a few back roads to lose the fans tailing him, Baekhyun kicks his shoes off at the dorm and finds Junmyeon sitting out in the living room. The television is on in front of him, playing on a low volume. He is staring at it but not watching it.

“Hi, leader,” Baekhyun says as he pulls a water bottle from the fridge.

Junmyeon nods at him and waves him off to bed, but doesn’t ask any questions so Baekhyun shuffles wordlessly to his room.

Chanyeol is sitting on the floor when Baekhyun walks in, long legs stretched out with his guitar perched on his lap. His toes can almost touch Baekhyun’s bed on the opposite wall of their tiny room.

Baekhyun shrugs out of his jacket, and takes off his shirt. Chanyeol keeps strumming the same three minor chords. Then he says, “How was it?”

“Fine.”

“Fine enough for a second?”

Chanyeol’s guitar pauses for a bit, resumes again when Baekhyun glances at him, and then Baekhyun brings his water bottle to his lips, pensively. “I think so,” he replies, sitting on the floor across from Chanyeol. Their legs touch.

Chanyeol raises an eyebrow at him. Baekhyun shifts so that his toes curl into the fabric of Chanyeol’s sweatpants.

“She’s really weird,” Baekhyun supplies.

“How do you mean?”

“Like…” He thinks about the shape of her eyes—large and unexpressive. “Like, I’m not sure exactly.”

“Is it a bad weird?”

Baekhyun considers it. In his head, her voice keeps playing back.  _So dull, isn’t it?_

“I haven’t decided,” he tells Chanyeol.

Then he pushes apart Chanyeol’s legs with his feet, and crawls in between them. Chanyeol watches him unblinkingly, as Baekhyun shoves aside the guitar and traces a finger across Chanyeol’s Adams’ apple. Chanyeol places a hand on Baekhyun’s bare collarbones. They inhale and exhale the same breaths, and then Baekhyun turns the lights out.

 

-

 

Following the café escapade, Baekhyun and IU climb the search engine hits, attracting more attention than they had the last time. IU, who hasn’t put out new music for eleven months, manages to hit the charts and grab the #3 spot for music sales on her old album. Their companies release a joint statement a few days later, highlighting heavily that they don’t know the details but only that the two have become recent friends.

“Friends.” Jieun points her phone screen at him. “They called us friends.”

Baekhyun cups a hand over his forehead and shields his eyes as he looks up at the sun. He’s wearing sunglasses and a ratty sweater, and no one has spared them a glance yet. The park isn’t busy at this hour, so Baekhyun lights a cigarette, his first one in weeks.

“What else would they call us?” he counters.

“What would  _you_  call us?”

He blows out a ring of smoke. “Acquaintances with mutual understandings.”

Jieun actually laughs. It’s melodic and pretty, how he imagined her laugh would sound like, but like her smiles, there’s that residual feeling that she is laughing  _at_ him and not with him. “Mutual? Isn’t this all one-sided?”

“You said you’re in it for the fun.”

“I’m in it because I have time on my hands and you pay for my food,” she says easily. “And I don’t know what sort of kick you get out of this. Attention? That sounds childish. Doesn’t it give your leader a headache?”

When Taeyeon used to come by the dorms, Junmyeon was the one that would walk her home. He never minded. Whatever kept the peace. Baekhyun himself always found playing gentleman was a little tiresome. “It does, but only when the issue gets out of hand,” he says. The company dislikes scandals only when it costs them money.

“Maybe I should have joined a girl group, then. Dump all my problems on someone else.”

He pinches his cigarette. “Are you saying I don’t face my problems?” She shrugs. He scoffs. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Don’t I? You’ve made yourself a fake dating scandal for attention. God knows that’s not a first.” She is wearing a boy’s snapback, turned backwards, and her bangs are all messed up across her forehead. Baekhyun can’t stop looking at her.

He licks his lips, tasting ashes. “Look, there are just some things that I—“

“No, I don’t care what goes on in your life. Your problems are your problems.” And she says it in that manner of saying things that really should be rude, but just isn’t because more than anything, it just sounds bored. She doesn’t ask questions, Baekhyun realizes. That’s the strange part about her. Every word out of her mouth is a statement, and every word is true.

The sun is making autumn feel like spring. He pulls a bit at the neck of his sweatshirt. “Why did you become a soloist?”

“I joined the company and that’s where they put me,” she replies simply.

“Does it get lonely?”

“Does being in a group get loud?”

He wrinkles his nose. “You’re avoiding.”

“I think you are too. With this fake scandal.” She turns her neck then, to look at him and he doesn’t know why he didn’t think she was pretty when he first saw her. Her face is plain and her skin is very white but all of that seems rather enchanting now.

But maybe it isn’t her features that he is seeing anew. It’s the long, hard look and the thin press of her lips as he meets her eyes. Her gaze feels like a flashlight, lighting up Baekhyun’s insides and the chest of secrets beside his heart.

“You shouldn’t talk about what you don’t know,” he says, after a while, watching the butt of his cigarette turn black and burn up into smoke. “It’s not entertaining.”

She chuckles at that, short and sort of sad, though it sounds, for the first time, genuinely amused. “I don’t know anything, but I’ve been in this business longer than you have. I know how to read people.” She rolls up the sleeves of her oversized hoodie. Her arms are so short that the ends of the sleeves cover way past her fingertips. “I don’t pretend to know things. I pretend to  _not_  know things.” She looks at him again. “Because I can tell when a person wants me to not know things.”

His cigarette falls from his fingertips, and lands soundlessly in the grass. She stomps it out when he makes no move to. They are quiet for a long time, watching old couples stroll through the park, and younger ones walking dogs and playing with kids and he knows they’re both thinking that could have been them if they weren’t who they are.

“I don’t have close friends,” she says abruptly. Her chin is perched on her knees. She has a face mask around her neck that she lifts up now, so that it covers up to her nose. “I was always training instead of attending school and never socialized. I don’t  _feel_  lonely, though.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything. In truth, he suspects that she just doesn’t know  _how_  to feel lonely. It is easy to pretend you don’t feel a lot of things when there are people and cameras and fans to distract you. Under the light, it’s never dark.

“You keep calling it a fake scandal.” He tilts his head towards her, leaning forward until he can count each thin eyelash along her eyes. “What would make it a real one, then?”

She blinks once, and her top lashes touch her bottom ones. She has that same look on her face, the flashlight one. “Who broke your heart, Byun Baekhyun?” she whispers. But when he leans the rest of the way, she lets him kiss her.

 

-

 

When their schedules get busy again, they only have time to meet at night. The van takes Baekhyun back to the dorms and while everyone showers and sleeps, he grabs his face mask and puts his shoes back on.

Jieun’s apartment is walking distance from his. He taps two short knocks on the door and she doesn’t invite him inside but usually, they take her car and drive around. They go to Hongdae and listen to the buskers. She stops for all of them, which surprises Baekhyun and confuses him a little because it’s strange to see her interested in something. But she doesn’t talk much so Baekhyun doesn’t either.

Mostly though, she likes to park the car in a spot that overlooks the river and they usually end up tangled up in the backseat. They have sex, the first time with their clothes kind of on, but subsequently, with less clothes on, and it doesn’t make much sense, the whole thing, but her voice as she breathes unsteadily and rests in his lap is so different than what he is used to that it is almost calming.

In an interview, a few days later, the inevitable happens and as always, Baekhyun laughs his charismatic laugh and pushes the question on Junmyeon because that’s what Junmyeon was trained for.

“Ah, yes, Baekhyun doesn’t share too much about his private life with the members but I’m sure they are close friends, right?” Junmyeon finishes it with a laugh and the interviewer is thoroughly charmed.

“But certainly, closer than  _close_ , yes?” says the interviewer, then her eyes float to Baekhyun who pretends to be bashful, and it’s enough of a yes to make the whole affair official.

One day at the company building, he runs into Taeyeon on his way to the practice room. She looks like she has just finished in the gym, with her hair tied up and a towel over her shoulder. She notices him as she is sipping her water bottle and she’s as beautiful as she was the last time he saw her.

“Hello, noona.” He speaks first when she doesn’t say anything.

She wipes her mouth with her hand. “Hey,” she says belatedly.

“How was the Japan concerts?”

“Great,” she nods. “They were great.”

“That’s nice.” The silence is thick and awkward. Baekhyun spouts an excuse to leave, but as they step around each other in the hallway, she stops him.

“I like her,” she says, and Baekhyun spins around.

“Sorry?”

“Lee Jieun. I met her once, doing a CF.” She frowns, fiddling with the water bottle cap in her hand. “She has this way of speaking…”

He licks his lips uncertainly. “I know what you mean.”

Taeyeon stares at him for a moment longer. Baekhyun waits for her to say more, but she just tilts her head to the side as if she is still trying to figure him out, after all this time. For some reason, it makes Baekhyun think of Jieun and her soft, sharp words. He thinks he understands the difference now, between her and Taeyeon. Jieun is more like him—not expecting anything out of their relationship, and not wanting anything in particular either.

When December comes, it gets much colder. They buy hot coffee and sip it as they stroll by the river. This time, it is busy. They’ve attracted a large crowd. Jieun zips her coat all the way up to her chin.

“I’m not giving you my scarf just to play boyfriend,” he says around the rim of his cup. It’s supposed to be lighthearted, but somehow with her, it always seems like there’s no such thing.

Jieun plays IU, because there isn’t much else she can do with people watching them, smiling all the way up to her eyes, and pretending to laugh a little as if he has just told her a joke. She hits him on the arm, a swat that looks playful and cute but is actually probably going to leave a bruise.

Later that day, they meet up again in the night. They’re piled over each other in the backseat of her car, breathing softly into the silence. When they finish, she slips her shirt back on and drives him to the dorm.

Junmyeon is on the couch, in front of the television again—as always, scolding with his eyes and never his words. Baekhyun gives him a tired, two-fingered wave.

The room is dark when he walks in. Chanyeol is facing the wall, covers thrown over his lean body. Baekhyun stares at him, a lump forming in the middle of his throat. Without changing, he pulls Chanyeol’s blanket back and slips in beside him.

Chanyeol doesn’t move. Baekhyun wraps his arms around Chanyeol’s waist, and breathes in Chanyeol’s body heat like it’s oxygen.

After a while, when sleep is already attaching itself slowly onto Baekhyun’s consciousness, Chanyeol’s muffled voice rumbles and jolts Baekhyun awake.

“You’re so cold,” Chanyeol says.

Baekhyun opens his eyes and sees the pitch-black darkness of the room.

“And you smell like perfume.”

The line between one sort of love and another has always been blurry to Baekhyun. Love isn’t like falling. It isn’t at all sudden, or fast or traceable to a single moment. It is a collective experience—like standing on stage under hot lights and makeup and crowds screaming his name. It’s all the parts put together that make the experience, as a whole, magical.

That’s what friendship is, and that’s what attraction is. And so, nothing definite separates one from the other.

Baekhyun holds Chanyeol closer and says nothing. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. The lump in his throat feels like it’s growing and growing, expanding so wide Baekhyun is afraid it might burst through his skin and break him.

 

-

 

On one of December’s warmer nights, Baekhyun meets Jieun on the river bank, texting her half-past midnight to bring beer and doesn’t wait for an answer as he leaves the dorm.

Jieun is there first, a huge red plaid shawl wrapped around her shoulders. A six pack is at her feet and Baekhyun grabs one as he sits down beside her.

The moon looks large tonight. Baekhyun stares at its rippled reflection in the water. Seoul is lighted up on the black horizon and the lights of the city shimmer alongside the moon’s.

It’s a long time before Baekhyun speaks.

“I’m in love with someone I can never be with,” he tells her. She has never asked and probably never would have, but Baekhyun realizes that he had slowly built up this dying urge to just tell her and he can’t decide why. Maybe it was when he had run into Taeyeon, who always wore her heart on her sleeve, and he supposes that sometimes, even when the person doesn’t demand answers, reality does.

Jieun, as he expects, seems unaffected. “I see why you wanted the beer,” is all she says, tipping her can a little, raising it to the moon. The thing about her is that Baekhyun knows that she is a good listener, even if she pretends not to be.

“So that’s it, huh?” she prompts, when Baekhyun gets lost in his thoughts and forgets to say more. “What’s the problem? Kim Taeyeon doesn’t love you back?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not Taeyeon-noona.”

Jieun leans back on her elbows. The moonlight kisses her pale skin. Her face is so white, it’s almost translucent, in this lighting. “Was she not okay with being used?” she asks. She doesn’t say it harshly, but it squeezes Baekhyun’s stomach anyways.

“I was the one that broke up with her, not the other way around.”

“Tragic,” Jieun purses her lips, unimpressed. “You really let one go there. She’s pretty. Graceful.”

“So are you, in public.”

“I meant she’s like that for real.”

“Yeah. She is,” Baekhyun concedes. “That’s why I felt bad.”

“About using her,” Jieun restates.

Baekhyun’s beer tastes sour on his tongue. “Yeah.”

“But you don’t feel bad with me.”

“I—“ Baekhyun glances at her. Her face is as impassive as it always is. She had said it with her encyclopedia voice—unobtrusive, non-committal. Like a straight fact that neither pleases her nor offends her.

“I don’t think you’re a bitch or anything, though I think you want me to,” Baekhyun says.

She sits up fully, and turns her head completely to look at him. Her gaze is intense. “I don’t care what you think.”

“I think you’ve just seen the same thing over and over and now you’re tired.”

She is still holding her beer can, tapping a finger against it as she stares out at the water. There is a charm to her. Baekhyun had been wrong to think there wasn’t. But it isn’t the sort of charm that is usually found in a smile or a gesture. He thinks he sees it now, when she is just perfectly still. Under the moonlight, cheeks pink, huddled into her shawl. Undeniably beautiful, but a beauty that reminds him, he decides, of a flower right as it starts to wilt—you want to hold it between your palms, as if to keep it from dying.

And yet, flowers are universally pretty. Even the dead ones—you look at them and know that they once had their beautiful days. In the past.

“I debuted when I was fifteen,” she says. She empties her beer with a flick of her wrist. “That’s too young to start being scrutinized  _without_  becoming cynical.”

He watches her crush the metal can in her fist, squeezing it flat. “You’re right about what you said before,” he tells her. “I think you do pretend to not notice things.”

She sighs on a long, quiet exhale. There is that haunting hollowness to her expression again, when her lips lift in the smallest of smiles. It is so miniscule that Baekhyun almost wonders if he imagines it in the dark.

“I notice what people want me to notice. That’s what you do in this life—smile real big and look real pretty.” She winds back her arm, lurches it forward, and then the beer can flies from her fingers. It doesn’t quite reach the water, but it tumbles down the riverbank, and lands somewhere along the edge of it.

“And that’s not a celebrity thing. That’s a human thing.”

 

-

 

In the spirit of Christmas, the music channels arrange holiday friendship broadcasts which is really an excuse to round up every idol in the Korean music industry and make them sing carols. Jieun has been to far too many, she’s lost count of all the years she’s attended.

When she arrives, her manager leaves her alone in her large dressing room and she naps but gets bored rather quickly afterwards. Against her better judgement, she walks down into the lobby of the studio building. There are fans pressed up right against the windows, who make a little bit of noise when they see her fold her legs into a chair. She waves at them until they lose interest.

Her phone buzzes with a message.  _There already?_  Baekhyun asks.

_Lobby._

He doesn’t reply after that, but when the fans outside start to jump over the barricades a few minutes later, she assumes he is here.

The EXO members file into the lobby, one-by-one. She recognizes their leader, but can’t remember anything aside from his stage name, and most of the other names escape her. The one Chinese member bows at her as he passes and she bows back—a full bow because people are looking—before she spots Baekhyun and Chanyeol bringing up the rear.

Baekhyun spots her and walks over to her, pulling unnecessarily at her arm which she doesn’t like but she lets it go because there is an audience.

He doesn’t speak to her as she follows the entire group into their dressing room. He’s in the middle of a conversation with Chanyeol, about a video game she’s never played. Baekhyun is making wide hand gestures and Chanyeol looks amused, but he also keeps looking at her, as if genuinely worried that she might feel left out. She almost wants to laugh and pat his head.

The group is gathered up by the stylists, and costumes are thrown at them. Jieun sits patiently in a makeup chair and pokes at open palettes of blushes and eyeshadows before she looks up and meets Chanyeol’s eyes in the mirror.

His makeup isn’t done, but he’s dressed in his stage outfit already.

“I was going to head back down to the lobby and grab some coffee. It’s free for artists,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Did you… want to come?”

She narrows her eyes a little—her instinctive reaction to overt kindness, not anything personal against Chanyeol because she doesn’t know him—but she could use some coffee so she nods and follows him out of the dressing room and back down the hallway.

Fans are still milling around outside, and they pound on the glass when Chanyeol waves at them. The two of them walk over to the coffee machine, where he pulls two large cups from the dispenser and places them under the nozzle.

“Baekhyun hasn’t brought you ‘round to the dorm yet,” Chanyeol says, conversationally. "That’s rude of him. You should call him out for it next time.”

He presses a few buttons and the black coffee trickles out. He is staring at the machine and not at her. “Oh, it’s fine. I’m not offended by much, least of all that,” she replies.

“I think maybe he’s serious about you. He doesn’t want to risk having you over and us, completely destroying his image.” Chanyeol laughs as he says it, waiting for both cups to fill before pulling them away carefully. But still, he doesn’t look at her.

She suspects what he is saying is probably not true. Their leader didn’t seem like the kind of person who meddled, and she has a feeling Baekhyun doesn’t talk about her.

“It’s fine,” she says. She takes one coffee from his hand, sliding a sleeve under its base to keep her hand from burning. Chanyeol puts a lot of sugar into his drink. “I’m really rather bland and uninteresting. I don’t do well with small-talk. Unlike him. Unlike you.”

Chanyeol glances at her abruptly, freezing mid-pour of his third sugar packet. “Oh,” he says. His eyebrows scrunch together, like he is confused. “That’s… blunt. But he hangs out with you all the time, so I’m sure there must be some charm.”

Jieun isn’t accustomed to so much pleasantries. More than that, Chanyeol has the distinct aura of genuine kindness, which is such a rare breed of human, she almost wants to poke him and ensure that he is real.

“You’re a different kind of pretty than you are in pictures,” he offers. She scratches her nose lightly with a finger and quirks an eyebrow. He must think she is offended because he tries to backpedal, but she just waves it away.

“I’m probably not a friend to Baekhyun, in the proper sense of the word.”

“Well, you’re dating, right?” Chanyeol stirs his coffee a few times, and pushes a lid onto his cup. “So I guess you wouldn’t be a ‘friend.’”

Jieun puts a drop of milk into her own drink, swirls it around until it has changed colour, then takes a small sip without blowing on the steam. “I mean I’m not sure we like each other very much. We’re too alike that we actually find each other quite annoying, I think.”

Chanyeol passes her a lid, studying her with a flickering gaze. His shoulders seem tense, a little rigid all around, and when he swipes at his lips with his tongue, she has a strange feeling she’s stumbled upon the chink in a suit of armour, but can’t figure out what that chink is exactly.

They head back to the dressing room. Baekhyun is seated by the makeup counter and he gives them a long look—back and forth, back and forth—as they enter.

“No coffee for me?” he comments, swiping up Chanyeol’s cup out of his hand unabashedly.

“Sorry, Baek. Then I would have had to get the whole group.”

Baekhyun hums out a displeased noise, chugging the caffeine greedily.

“Did Jieun play nice?” he says to Chanyeol, and Chanyeol’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. He glances at Jieun, as if expecting a haughty retort. Jieun simply sips her coffee.

“I was totally charming, Baekhyun,” she replies, in a voice flatter than her usual tone.

“You call him Baekhyun,” Chanyeol murmurs. He has large eyes, Jieun thinks, as they flutter back to her.

“What else would I call him?”

“I thought you’d call him oppa, since you’re younger.”

There is a long silence, in which Chanyeol awaits a genuine answer. Baekhyun meets Jieun’s eyes and laughs.

“Jieun is very different from IU, Chanyeol.” Baekhyun pets his hair. It looks comical, with the way he has to go up slightly on his tippy toes to even reach the top of Chanyeol’s head.

Jieun stares at Baekhyun solemnly. “I’m younger than you? Never would have guessed.”

“IU-ssi!” There is a knock on the open door, and a music show producer is peering his head in curiously. “Your manager is looking for you.”

“Sure,” she says, and tosses her hair over her shoulder. She lowers her head to bow at Chanyeol, then turns around towards the door. She can see her manager pacing around the hallway outside.

She pauses in the doorway suddenly, coffee turning her palm warm even through the sleeve. She peers back over her shoulder, just to look.

They are standing closer than she remembers them being, as Baekhyun takes large sips from Chanyeol’s cup still, his thin lips lingering on the rim. She sees Chanyeol’s grinning face, pushing hair back on Baekhyun’s forehead.

Chanyeol’s hand falls down the length of Baekhyun’s arm, resting at his hip for a moment. Jieun watches him press a thumb into Baekhyun’s hipbone through the shirt, and then Jieun is thinking about that night on the riverbank. It was late and there was alcohol, but Baekhyun had been saying something about love and as she watches them—their touches fleeting and hidden and stolen—for the first time, really, she understands what Baekhyun was saying.

 

-

 

The broadcast ends late. She is glad she drank coffee earlier in the day, or else she would be swaying in her spot. When her performance ends, a backstage camera finds her and she smiles at it and rattles off an answer to the producer’s question, which she honestly doesn’t know if she heard properly but she just says, oh yes I’m tired but it was so good to see the fans and I don’t like these night broadcasts because I worry about how the fans will get home safe.

It’s something she heard Suzy say once and it’s the first thing that tumbles out of Jieun’s drowsy mouth, but the producer loves it and leaves her alone.

She waits outside for the van, cursing the nighttime wind in her stupid leather miniskirt which shouldn’t even be legal for broadcast.

A long, puffy coat drapes over her shoulders. She looks up, unsurprised to see Chanyeol coming up beside her. He gives her a wan, tired smile.

“You look so cold,” he comments, nodding at her exposed legs. She shrugs, and clenches her teeth so they don’t chatter. “Sorry Baek is such a shitty boyfriend.”

“That should be an apology to yourself.”

He blinks at her, wide eyes going wider. “What?”

She inhales deeply. The coat is warm and soft and she pulls it around herself tighter. Chanyeol is very handsome, she thinks. The real, textbook handsome with a lean, model figure and soft features. She regards him with a long look.

“Sorry Baekhyun is such a shitty boyfriend,” she says to him earnestly.

His mouth parts and closes, parts and closes, like a fish out of water. He’s at such a loss, Jieun feels a twang of something for him in her chest—pity, she thinks it is.

“I’m—I—I’m not sure I follow.” He’s shivering but he doesn’t look cold.

Jieun sighs, and her breath comes out a white puff into the winter air. “You do, but that’s fine if you play dumb. I play dumb all the time. People would hate to find out I’m smart,” she replies, and a soft, humourless laugh escapes her throat. Out of the corner of her eye, Chanyeol is staring at her as if she is an unsolved puzzle and he can’t even make sense of the pieces.

“Look, I’m okay with playing this game with Baekhyun,” she goes on. He opens his mouth to say something but she stops him. She knows he knows. He must know. Baekhyun does it all for him, after all. “But you—you’re too nice to play this game. I’m not nice so it doesn’t make a difference to me.”

Chanyeol runs his tongue between his lips. They look a little chapped in the cold. She sees her van approaching around the bend, and shrugs off his coat, handing it back to him.

He takes it hesitantly. “I know what he means now,” he says. “About you being really weird.”

Her manager pulls up to the curb. She places a hand on the door handle, and turns around when she speaks. He looks so solemn, his figure only half-lighted by a street lamp. She laughs, a real, full laugh that leaves her feeling very warm. Chanyeol blinks rapidly, taken aback.

“You know what, Chanyeol?” she pulls open the van door and steps inside. “I know what he means now, too—about being in love.”

She waves at him once as the door slides closed.

 

-

 

They sit in her car with the radio turned on. A tinny folk tune plays through the speakers. Baekhyun starts humming to it. She harmonises with him on the chorus. When the song ends, it is quiet again.

The river stretches out in front of them, and there is a little soju in Baekhyun’s system, but neither one of them crawl into the backseat. Jieun is drumming her fingers against the steering wheel, forever patient, never prodding, looking forward at the dark waters.

Time slows down when he is with her. At least, she has this unique ability to make it seem so. Maybe it’s in the way she never speaks first, and always waits until he is ready to talk.

One of her own songs starts playing on the radio. He doesn’t know the title, but he knows her voice. Her fingers stop drumming on her steering wheel, and she stares at the radio for a full verse until she reaches out and presses the off button.

“How did you find out?” he asks her.

She cocks her head to the side, one way and then the other. At the Christmas broadcast, he had seen her speaking with Chanyeol as she waited for her van and Chanyeol walked over to him after looking as bemused as Baekhyun always felt after he’s had a conversation with her himself.

“You know,” she answers, her hands falling into her lap. She leans back in her chair. “Even when you guys are smiling at each other, I think you just look really sad.” She catches her lower lip between her teeth, then releases it. “I think that’s why I knew. Love is awfully sad.”

There is something sad about her too—not that she, herself, is full of sorrow. But rather, it is something about her collective being, hidden in the way she speaks or sometimes stares far off into the distance as if forgetting where she is. He remembers what she said, about not having close friends. It’s like she is sad but she doesn’t know it, and so Baekhyun doesn’t know whether that actually makes her sad, then.

“That’s cynical,” he tells her.

“Ah, well,” she says.

“Love is more than sadness.”

“Oh, I know that too. It’s many things but it’s also far too complicated and frankly, I don’t have the effort to figure it out,” she explains. Then her face, altogether, softens. And the smile that tugs her lips is delicate—not that she, herself, is delicate but rather that this single moment is, and Baekhyun wants it to last, to preserve a smile like that lest it shatter like glass and break forever.

“Figure it out, huh?” He considers her words.

“Yes. But if it is any consolation, I do hope you do.” She doesn’t look at him as she says it, but it’s enough. Baekhyun takes a deep breath.

“I decided something yesterday.”

“Thank God,” she says.

He rolls his eyes. “I’m flattered that you care so  _much_  about me.”

“I meant that more for Chanyeol,” she replies. “He’s too good for you.”

Baekhyun blows his hair out of his eyes. “I don’t think I should fuck you if I’m not in love with you.”

“That sounds pretty reasonable.”

He rubs a thumb over his knuckles, looking down. “But I still…”

“What?” She turns to him sharply when he trails off.

“It doesn’t mean we should be strangers,” he finishes.

She is quiet for a moment. He sees her shoulders rise up as she inhales, falling back down as she releases the breath. Baekhyun’s toes curl in his shoes.

“Okay,” she says.

He blinks. “Really?”

“What do you mean, ‘really’? You thought I was hanging out with you for what, the sex?” She laughs loudly at her own joke, and Baekhyun feels like the punchline. He furrows his eyebrows.

“I can’t decide whether to be offended or not,” he replies.

She shrugs, non-committal and probably, uncaring. Baekhyun smiles at her. “I suspect you’re fond of me,” he says suddenly. Her jaw twitches. “Deep, deep down.”

She hums. “I can’t agree with you,” she answers, throwing him a look of deep disapproval. Baekhyun feels his smile grow. It is quiet again and he likes it. He likes sitting with her, smelling her airy perfume and bouncing lazy, unfiltered thoughts off of her, and she takes them and throws harder ones back. Her allure is much like her genuine smiles—delicate, and infrequently seen. A presence that challenges, and then comforts, without you knowing.

“But no one has asked me for friendship like that,” she murmurs. She stares down at her nails, perfectly manicured, picking out invisible dust from underneath them. “That was really strange.”

Baekhyun’s eyes glint as he glances at her, teasingly. “Are you, perhaps, in love with me Lee Jieun?”

She juts out her lower lip. Baekhyun doesn’t have her figured out—he probably never will—but he supposes she doesn’t have herself figured out either. Maybe she is the only person she hasn’t been able to break down yet—the self, the ultimate mystery.

She doesn’t answer his question, and Baekhyun suspects she just doesn’t know.

“I think you can take me home now,” he says, and she nods, starting the engine. Baekhyun rolls the windows down as she drives, and the wind floods into the car, whipping in his ears. He closes his eyes, leans back and grins as the night air glides across his skin.

When he opens his eyes again, Jieun is looking at him, with her own, delicate smile. He points to the sunroof, in askance. She shrugs. He grins wider and pushes the button on the dashboard to open it.

He climbs into the backseat as she steps on the gas, standing up fully so that his whole upper body sticks out into the night. He shouts in glee as he lifts his arms and even over the roaring wind, he hears Jieun’s laugh, ringing through the air, reverberating through his body.

And if that laugh could be heard across the city, nation or world, it would be a sound that resonated with every lost and broken soul.


End file.
